Comments for On Smalltalk

Comment on Using Magritte With Seaside by nyc casino

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Comment on Using Magritte With Seaside by Miguel Cobá

Miguel Cobá — Sat, 10 May 2008 06:12:24 +0000

Until this week I finally began to learn Magritte. I read all the tutorials, all the documentation I could find in the web and, in a post in the mailing list, a link to your post.
First it seemed like Magritte was the perfect tool to speed up the development of a couple projects I have in mind. The examples from the tutorials were amazing. You can build/validate forms with little effort. All seemed perfect. But, when I began to do the real work of my project I find myself trying to change the way Magritte do things by default. The layout of fields, the css, the validations, etc.
A feeling of being programing something that was not the app, but the meta/descriptions/custom renderers began to grow inside me.
Often I was trying to solve problems related to Magritte (customize it to adapt to my needs) instead of solving problems of my project.
Of course you save time by no writing forms by hand. But many times, the time saved was lost trying to adapt Magritte.
Furthermore, the code began to have classes (like CAFancyCheckbox or MACssRenderer in your example) that had nothing to do with my problem domain. Like another layer that you have to understand before getting to the problem domain.
So, when I saw your comments I realize that I was not the only with this feeling. I agree with you that, as Seaside allows you to quickly create exactly what you need, in the long term the benefit of Magritte are not as evident and useful as initially appears.
I have Magritte in a very high concept, both as a framework as and thesis work, but I think that Seaside is more than enough to write a big project without the need of another layer hiding your problem domain.

Cheers,
Miguel Cobá

Comment on A Simple File Based Wiki in Seaside by Ramon Leon

Ramon Leon — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:20:15 +0000

OK, there was a bug in the #initialRequest: method concerning the trailing / on the root page, I fixed it, updated the article and the fileOut at the end with the new code. Should work fine now.

Comment on A Simple File Based Wiki in Seaside by Justin

Justin — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:07:58 +0000

Hey Ramon,

I’m trying to follow your tutorial but keep coming up with a InvalidDirectoryError [see below]; sorry to bother but was wondering if you knew how it might be arising ? Was wondering if it was some problem with relative vs absolute path names ? The wikiPages directory is getting created fine btw. I am a Rails guy trying to see what all the fuss is re Seaside, so any help would be mucho appreciated.

Many thanks,

Justin

Comment on My Squeak Image by Ramon Leon

Ramon Leon — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 03:56:17 +0000

Most of those questions are about the OmniBrowser, those questions are best asked on the squeak dev list as the OmniBrowser is under heavy development. I honestly don’t know much about its internals, I just use it. As for the fonts, I don’t know that either, I use the ones already installed and just use code to set my font preferences. I don’t have the script handy, or I’d show it.

Comment on My Squeak Image by matthew

matthew — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:49:07 +0000

Thanx man, it’s way cool!
I’m rather new to squeak (been using visualworks for some time) and finding your image really made my day as i was trying to set up a base image for development work.
I have a few questions, at this point mostly cosmetic issues related to the enhancements loaded in this image:
1) what’s up with those “OBIconicButton”s, where do they get their label and its font from, and how do I change it? “IconicButton”s have a label, but if I set it it shows behind the icon together with the “automatic” one…
2) I’d like to change the way the browsers “disable” their buttons: currently “disabled” ones show normally and “enabled” show like they’re pressed; I’d like to leave the enabled ones up and either use a different color or “depress” the disabled ones, but couldn’t find where to put my hands despite browsing endless message sends and class hierarchies. I’m rather stuck, any idea? Also, am I right to guess that Morphic widgets don’t have an equivalent of the “enabled” attribute, and are always enabled? If so, is it just missing or is it so by design?
3) I also loaded FreeType, and while it works great in itself the font selection menus really do not cope well with the resulting hundreds of items. Is there an easy way to choose which fonts are imported? Am i right to assume I’ll be able to use the image on Linux if I bring the needed fonts along? As far as I understand, the plugin is also available for linux and osx.
0) Was this the right place to ask these questions? If not, where?
Again thanks for the real good work.

Comment on My Squeak Image by Agnaldo

Agnaldo — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:21:00 +0000

It’s very cool.
I am a good java developer, but i have worked with smalltalk (cincom).
Now i want develop rich interface application, you change de design for GUI squeak very cool.

I will learn to help this job.

Comment on A Squeak Smalltalk Development Example by Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:07:32 +0000

an even niceer development image to start from (derived from the one by Damien Cassou) is found at Ramon Leon’s website at:
http://onsmalltalk.com/my-squeak-image/
http://onsmalltalk.com/downloads/DevImage.zip
being designed for cross-platform compatibility it doesn’t include freetype, which is highly recommended for everyday usage on windows boxes. i guess once can always get rid of the dependency later, first making sure to reset all fonts to squeak bitmapped, but i’m not sure.

Comment on 13 April 2008 > Squeak Image Updated by cdrick

cdrick — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:53:19 +0000

ok thanks for both informations :)

While doing my single example, I was looking for a pragma telling the relation like for :

address

…

So actually doing two forms was influenced by Magritte and a bad idea here I think as one is enough. I imagine you’re also thinking on validation of multiple conditions on several models. I particularly appreciated how you dealt with it in Magritte (didn’t found by myself the container trick)

Anyway, thanks for the clarification. Looking forward to hear more on that ;-)…

See you

Comment on 13 April 2008 > Squeak Image Updated by Ramon Leon

Ramon Leon — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:23:41 +0000

One of the reasons I haven’t open sourced this just yet is that I haven’t dealt with multiple model editing. It’ll get there, I’ve just been busy. The current solution would be to use the form as it’s own model, give it all the necessary fields, and after successful commit, update your actual model objects manually. Right now it’s pretty much optimized for single model editing, or forms with no model, like login forms or email forms and such.

Comment on 13 April 2008 > Squeak Image Updated by cdrick

cdrick — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:24:47 +0000

Sophie,

Yes that could be a good idea. But right now, I won’t use it, as I’m very busy until june at least. So I’m just open an image to relax from time to time :) (I guess I’m addicted really now ! ).

Anyway, I’ll definitly have a closer look at it and I’m sure lots of people will like this as a separate squeaksource project.

Right now, I just wonder how relations are “established” between objects. In other words, what are the equivalents for OneToOne and OneToMany relations in magritte ? Is it possible to express such relations in SSForm ? I tried to implement a simple model,a Person (name adress) and Adress (city code). Do I need to declare two forms, one for person and one for adress and then declare somehow the relation… ?

Thanks

Comment on 13 April 2008 > Squeak Image Updated by Sophie

Sophie — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:42:31 +0000

Cdrick,

I’m using SSForm and really like it. If you try it out as well, perhaps we should consider all working off a common project.

Sophie

Comment on 13 April 2008 > Squeak Image Updated by Ramon Leon

Ramon Leon — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:45:48 +0000

Yes, I no longer use Magritte for building forms, I build forms with SSForm. SSForm uses meta data from the model in the form of pragmas to render itself. It’s just for entry forms, and its big advantage over Magritte is simplicity and the ability to drop into raw Seaside by overriding the render method for a field to do fancy Ajax stuff when you feel the need. Magritte is too meta, and requires too much brain power to extend and customize. SSForm is much simpler, more straightforward, and is pure Seaside and pragmas, no crazy meta model to learn. SSForm also keeps all fields for a model in a single view making it vastly easier to have field to field or multiple field interactions.

Comment on 13 April 2008 > Squeak Image Updated by cdrick

cdrick — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:02:04 +0000

Hi Ramon…

Thanks again for your image. It’s nice to see how a personnal image looks like. It’s a good example to see how people program in smalltalk by gently extending their image.

So I had a closer look to some stuffs, and in particular SSForm (nice example of pragma uses). It seems to me it’s a kind of Magritte framework specialized in forms generation for seaside only, so it’s probably quicker to use. Is it how you see it ? Also, there is no straight viewers or do I miss something ? Anyway viewers are not a problem compared to entry forms…

So is SSForm a new strategy (to replace Magritte) for your editors, an experimentation or you plan to use both magritte and your SSForms (I see SSAdminBase uses magritte for instance but it’s older).

See you, and thanks for all this nice code examples ;)

Comment on Scaling Seaside Redux: Enter the Penguin by Simon Michael

Simon Michael — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:48:38 +0000

As mentioned above screen by default interferes with emacs keybindings - but dtach works perfectly. A must-have for server admins!

$ ssh server sudo apt-get install dtach
$ alias serveremacs=’ssh server -t dtach -A emacs emacs’
$ serveremacs # start or connect to emacs on server

Comment on My Squeak Image by Ramon Leon

Ramon Leon — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:42:31 +0000

Make it the same way I do, start with Damiens Squeak-Dev image and just open up the package universe and install what you like. I should really update my image, it’s a bit out of date now.

Comment on Domain Specific Languages - Ruby, a Sign Post on the Road to Smalltalk by Ramon Leon

Ramon Leon — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:40:13 +0000

Well said!

Comment on Domain Specific Languages - Ruby, a Sign Post on the Road to Smalltalk by Jimmie Houchin

Jimmie Houchin — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:01:22 +0000

Personally, I think it depends greatly on how you define pragmatic or practical.

For me a lone developer. I am very familiar with the tools available to me with Squeak. I can search, discover and find code. I have a history of all of my code. I have elegant version control with Monticello. Any time I even consider using something else because it is pragmatic. I have to think long and hard about all of the things I do within Squeak that I would have to find replacement tools and learn in those “pragmatic” languages.

I would have to choose an IDE or editor.
I would have to choose a version control system and potentially have to learn several at least to a certain point, depending on what projects I want to use or contribute to.
I would have to learn the pragmatic language.
I would have to learn the tools for which I am choosing said pragmatic language, ie: Rails, etc.
I would have to learn the debugging tools for said language and environments.
I would have to learn how to search for the code I need to accomplish whatever task is before me.
And these are just the simple things off of the top of my head that I am aware of. The list could easily grow larger.

For the legions of people who have already done all of the above and settled upon answers for these things, then yes, Ruby, Python, etc. can be the pragmatic choice.

But if you haven’t yet invested significant time in the above scenario. Then Squeak/Smalltalk could be a most excellent and pragmatic choice. And even if you have invested significant time in all of the above for your current pragmatic language. Squeak/Smalltalk can still be an excellent and pragmatic choice. All of the above is so elegantly a part of the Squeak/Smalltalk development environment that it is so very productive if you will spend the modest amount of time to learn it. I believe that once you do, you are amply rewarded with a very productive experience.

Basically, just wanted to add that the definition of pragmatic must be that of the individual. And that no single language has that defined for every situation or person.

Squeak/Smalltalk is a very enabling experience. And one you can enjoy the journey. :)

Comment on My Squeak Image by Yoandy Rodriguez

Yoandy Rodriguez — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:25:39 +0000

Hello there Ramon:
I’m Just starting with Squeak and seaside and wanted to thank you for the screencast and the Squeak image, they gave me a real kickstart( by the way, any tips about how to make my own?) but it seems to have problems with authenticating with proxy servers or at least when using them with Monticello.
Thanks in advance for any help you can give me and thanks again for all you have already given.

Comment on Simple File Based Application Configuration by Ramon Leon

Ramon Leon — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 02:12:14 +0000

Because I can, and often do, change my config files on the fly and want them to take effect immediately. Feeding the image on startup isn’t really an option. If I add an IP to an authorized IP list for example, that needs to happen without restarting the image.

Comment on Simple File Based Application Configuration by Norbert Hartl

Norbert Hartl — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:23:07 +0000

Nice and simple. I somehow like the MetaConfig config/config file :) But why don’t you use a startup script for the squeak image? It is simple, too.

I want to configure seaside as well. So using a startup script and

configuration := (
(WADispatcher default)
entryPointAt: ‘mywebapp’
) configuration.

configuration valueAt: #database put: ‘dbname’.

The rest of my application config goes into a configuration object which is also populated from the startup script

Comment on A Simple File Based Wiki in Seaside by Ramon Leon

Ramon Leon — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 19:47:31 +0000

You’re welcome.

Comment on A Simple File Based Wiki in Seaside by jared

jared — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 20:04:39 +0000

Thanks a lot for putting this on the web. It’s the first useful Seaside coding example I’ve run across. It’s actually up to date, gives good hints for a smalltalk beginner (who’d think that the phrase “setup the app on the class side” would be a crucial reminder?), and it’s short enough that I can wrap my head around it. (Really short! All the good stuff Alan Kay’s been advertising is true!)

Now that I’m getting comfortable with the system browser, I don’t know how I’m going to go back to writing php in vim…

Comment on Domain Specific Languages - Ruby, a Sign Post on the Road to Smalltalk by Ramon Leon

Ramon Leon — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:19:12 +0000

I agree with you about Ruby being more pragmatic, and that’s certainly a good reason to choose it. Smalltalk however, is much more fun, and for those of us who do have the option to use it, pragmatism be damed, I’m going for the fun!

Comment on Domain Specific Languages - Ruby, a Sign Post on the Road to Smalltalk by S. Potter

S. Potter — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:15:28 +0000

@chrisr
This is rather late, but I did just want to point out that Ruby is keeping continuations in 1.9 and 2.x going forward. I am not sure if this was under discussion when you made the comment or if you misunderstood the author’s point about continuations in the blog post content?

Anyway Ramon, thank you for your piece. Conceptually I completely agree with you, but pragmatically I go with the languages that I can bare to develop in at the time that have good traction and momentum. Unfortunately Smalltalk has neither currently except in a microcosm of the programming world.

Many good points for thought, which is greatly appreciated by this evolving Rubyist.

Comment on How Fast is Squeak? by Bruce

Bruce — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 11:30:03 +0000

Interesting, but the Debian computer benchmarks game puts Python ahead of squeak. SmallTalk VisualWorks seems to totally pulverize Squeak and Python and Ruby.

I don’t know if it’s because they were using old version and since then squeak has greatly improved, I hope so.

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4sandbox/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=python&lang2=squeak

They still have squeak faster then ruby though.

Comment on Smalltalk Concurrency, Playing With Futures by My Software Development Blog » Blog Archive » Getting philosophical about futures

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:00:22 +0000

[...] into how cool futures can be when the technology uses a sufficient amount of introspection. The Smalltalk way is even more amazing (look at the very bottom of that article to see how easy it is to use). Very [...]

Comment on Mapping Seaside Blog to PostgreSQL with Glorp by Ramon Leon

Ramon Leon — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 20:33:54 +0000

I don’t really know anything about Visual Works, I’m just a Squeaker, sorry.

Comment on Mapping Seaside Blog to PostgreSQL with Glorp by Carlos

Carlos — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 12:40:35 +0000

Ramon, very nice post. I found a demo in the Cincom site that illustrates this article in VW steb by step. Seems that there is some UI code, maybe built by UIPainter. I am interested in how a glorp-based model i editable-viewable with a classic GUI. Regards, Carlos